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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="color:black">The Writing & Society Research Centre and the Philosophy Research Initiative at UWS presents following seminar on Wednesday April 4:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">SPEAKER: Alex Ling </span><span style="color:black">(</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">Lecturer)</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">School of Humanities and Communication Arts</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">University of Western Sydney</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">TITLE:
</span><span style="color:black">Parentheses in Time: <i>Last Year in Marienbad </i>
as Amorous Event<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">TIME: April 4, 2-4pm</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">PLACE: UWS Bankstown Campus, 3.G.55</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">ABSTRACT: </span><span style="color:black">This paper argues that the ‘timeless’ nature of Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s
<i>Last Year in Marienbad </i>(1961) results from the film’s presentation of what Alain Badiou would call an ‘amorous event’. In Badiou’s philosophy an event is a cut that intervenes between heterogeneous times, cleaving the old (the decaying past) from the
new (the ‘eternal present’ which is, properly speaking, the ‘truth’ of the past). In this paper I contend that
<i>Last Year in Marienbad</i> situates itself entirely within such a temporal rupture – in the very ‘cut’ between two times – and is as such a wholly
<i>evental</i> film. Indeed, what is <i>Last Year in Marienbad </i>if not the eternal (evental) encounter, amorous in nature, of X and A? The endlessness of this encounter lies moreover not so much in its being infinitely repeated (denied, forestalled, postponed…)
as in its being <i>undecided</i>. Did X and A actually meet last year in Marienbad? Did A agree to leave M for X? Did X rape A? Did M kill A? I argue that all of these questions (which the film steadfastly refuses to answer) are ultimately subsidiary effects
of <i>Marienbad</i>’s central undecidable event: are X and A in love? Such undecidability is central to Badiou’s characterisation of the event, insofar as there can be absolutely no
<i>knowledge</i> of an event’s occurrence, and as such there can be no criteria upon which to base a decision concerning its having taken place. Deciding an event’s occurrence is thus strictly speaking an act of ‘deciding the undecidable’. I contend it is precisely
this evental undecidability that is presented in Resnais and Robbe-Grillet’s film: like the event itself,
<i>Last Year in Marienbad </i>is not something to be <i>known</i>, but rather something to be
<i>decided</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">BIO: </span><span style="color:black">Alex Ling is Research Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Western Sydney. He is the author of
<i>Badiou and Cinema </i>(Edinburgh UP, 2011) and the co-editor and translator of Badiou’s
<i>Mathematics of the Transcendental </i>(Continuum, Forthcoming). His current research is on the role of artistic and scientific conditioning in contemporary continental philosophy. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color:black"> </span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN-US" style="color:black">For the entire 2012 program of the Philosophy seminar series at UWS see:
<a href="http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws/events/research_seminars_2012" target="_blank">
http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws/events/research_seminars_2012</a>
</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="color:black">Norma Lam-Saw<br>
Admin Officer, Philosophy Research Initiative<br>
School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney<br>
Contact: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color:black"><a href="mailto:philosophy@uws.edu.au" target="_blank"><span lang="EN-AU">philosophy@uws.edu.au</span></a></span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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